Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life

Imagine you’re a “corporate financier” (I have no idea what that means, but sounds high-paying, no?) working in Manhattan. Your weekly work hours reach 100, you’re gorging yourself on cheeseburgers and soda and your weight balloons to 230 pounds. Now you’re ready for Kilimanjaro, right?

In a roundabout way, that’s the story of climber-writer Bo Parfet, according to this article at National Geographic Adventure.

This doesn’t seem like the best approach for climbing any mountain, much less the highest in Africa. And of course, it wasn’t. But Parfet survived the experience (barely) and, in doing so, caught a climbing bug that would take him around the world in search of the highest peeks he could get his crampons on. Check out all his high altitude hi-jinks in his book Die Trying.

A good read by NGA, especially if you’ve been recently unemployed and need some inspiration to put that fifth beer down, get up off the couch and do something. Start a business, pick up a new sport, plan a frugal road trip, ANYTHING! Get all Transcendental, an old fashion American trait! Thank God this world put aside enormous tracts of wilderness. If we can’t find jobs or achieve other goals, there’s always a mountain to climb to build our self-esteem.